How we found a gap in transport in 14 days
Many transport companies fail in the first year because owners calculate profits on a napkin in a bar. This case shows how 14 days of reliable number-checking saved a budget from disaster.
Dreams versus the spreadsheet
A client came to us on October 3, 2024, with a plan to purchase three vans up to 3.5 tons. He wanted to service the Częstochowa-Dortmund route. He had 284,000 PLN saved up and was ready to sign a lease. On paper, everything looked good until we plugged his assumptions into our model. Numbers don't lie, and in this case, they showed that with current fuel rates and the lack of permanent return orders, the company would start generating debt as early as the second month of operation.
Instead of buying vehicles, we started by verifying 32 freight forwarding companies operating in the Silesian region. We checked real rates from the last 94 days, not the ones declared in marketing offers. It turned out that the average price per kilometer had fallen by 11.4% since the summer. This was the first warning sign the client hadn't noticed by only following general industry news. Without specific data from transport exchanges and phone interviews, he would have entered the market with his eyes closed.
Numbers don't lie. An owner's enthusiasm isn't enough to pay the lease on three vehicles in the first quarter.
Two weeks of hard analytics
Our work lasted exactly 14 business days. Tomasz Mazur, our main analyst, focused on hidden costs that are rarely mentioned in start-up guides. We analyzed service costs for specific car models from 2021 and 2022. We included real tire wear at full load and the cost of carrier liability insurance, which for new entities increased by 18.3% over the last year. We checked this on 427 examples from our database.
On the eighth day of the analysis, we discovered something more interesting than just high costs. We found a gap in specialized transport, specifically in the transport of parts for agricultural machinery on local routes up to 150 km. The rate per kilometer there was 3.2 PLN higher than on international routes, and the competition was 46% lower. This was concrete evidence on the table that changed the client's entire strategy. Instead of pushing onto the congested highway to Germany, we proposed serving local manufacturers.
Where was 41,760 PLN escaping?
Precise calculations showed that implementing the original plan would have cost the client exactly 3,480 PLN loss on each car per month. For the first quarter, this gave a sum of 41,760 PLN thrown down the drain. We cut unnecessary costs before they even arise, which is why our recommendation was brief: halt the purchase of three vans and buy one specialized unit with a hydraulic crane (HDS). Thanks to this, the client avoided unnecessary debt and entered a niche that actually makes money.
Heads-up: transport isn't just about kilometers; it's primarily about downtime. We calculated that the average waiting time for loading in Dortmund had increased to 5 hours and 14 minutes. With three vehicles, that's 15 hours of dead time per week. In the local model we proposed, downtime was reduced to 37 minutes per trip. These are real savings that can be seen in the wallet after the first month. Concrete results instead of promises.
Summary and a new opening
The finale was that on October 26, the client received a 19-page report from us with a ready action plan. Instead of risking life savings to fight freight forwarding giants, he opened a company serving 4 permanent contractors from the Częstochowa and Lubliniec areas. After the first 30 days, his profitability was 9.4%, which is an above-average result for this industry at the start. We checked the numbers and today we know it was the only right way.
If you're thinking about a new business, don't guess. We don't make PowerPoint presentations for fun; we dig into the data until we find the truth. Often this truth hurts because it forces you to change dreams of a large fleet for one but profitable vehicle. But ultimately, it's the money in the account that counts, not the number of stickers on the hood. Numbers don't lie, and we know how to read them.
We cut unnecessary costs before they arise. Avoiding a loss of 42,000 PLN is the best investment of this year.
